1. Field of Invention
The present invention pertains to the field of designing molecular structures. More particularly, this invention relates to the design of valence correct molecular structures using cellular encoding.
2. Art Background
A variety of design problems commonly involve the development or discovery of molecular structures that yields a desire result. For example, the problem of developing or discovering a drug commonly involves a search for a molecular structure that has a desired effect or property. Other design problems may involve finding a molecular structure having a desired set of properties such as strength, conductivity, etc. Still other design problems may involve finding a molecular structure having particular taste, binding properties, etc.
Typically, such molecular structures are developed by hand using techniques in which chemists posit valence correct molecular structures as solutions for a design problem and then test the solutions using simulation or physical testing. The search space of potential molecular structures that are evaluated when solving such design problems is usually extremely large. Unfortunately, prior techniques for generating valence correct molecular structures and evaluating them as possible solutions usually require extensive time and manpower due to the large search space.